Family still seeks change after Longo settlement

What did the Utica Police Department learn from Investigator Joseph Longo's downward spiral and ultimate murder of his wife?

What did the Utica Police Department learn from Investigator Joseph Longo's downward spiral and ultimate murder of his wife?

That's a question that has never been answered, even as a wrongful death lawsuit against the City of Utica was settled with the victim's family for $2 million this week.

The family of Kristin Palumbo-Longo is relieved they have been spared the civil trial that had been scheduled for next month. But, they said, the police department's steadfast belief that it didn't do anything wrong in handling Longo's troubling behavior still stirs the family's fear that another tragedy is waiting to happen.

"I really am afraid that someone else will get hurt," Palumbo-Longo's sister Gina Pearce said Friday, after the lawsuit was dismissed in U.S. District Court.

"I would like to think that the Utica Police Department has learned something," she said, "However, until they have put an adequate officer-involved domestic violence policy into place, how can our community be assured that something like this won't happen again?"

So now, Pearce said her family is committed to pressing for policy changes at the city's police department and for state-wide legislation that ensures appropriate domestic violence policies are adopted and enforced at all agencies across the state.

Pearce has created a Facebook page to promote this issue called: Lobbying for Kristin's Law.

If an internal investigation had been opened once Longo's wife told the department several times in summer 2009 about her husband's violent threats to harm himself and his family, things might have turned out differently, the family's attorneys have argued.

Instead, some officials like then-police Chief Daniel LaBella weren't familiar with the department's policy, while other officers made the decision that Palumbo-Longo's complaints didn't rise to the level of domestic violence.

Longo's actions were further mishandled when department officials believed they were qualified enough to judge Longo's emotional stability themselves, and when they offered Longo counseling instead of seeking a fitness-for-duty psychiatric evaluation, according to an expert opinion offered on behalf of Palumbo-Longo's family.

"Despite Officer Longo's well-known lack of veracity about personal matters, the command structure of the Utica Police Department relied upon its own collective judgments in dealing with him, rather than seeking professional consultation and guidance concerning threats posed by his escalating behaviors," wrote clinical psychologist Dr. Norman Lesswing.

"No one could have predicted or prevented this terrible tragedy," LaBella said Friday.

Utica Mayor Robert Palmieri relied on an earlier prepared statement.

"When I took office as the Mayor of the City of Utica in January 2012, I pledged to make decisions that were in the best interests of the residents of our City," Palmieri's statement read.

Then in announcing the $2 million settlement on behalf of Palumbo-Longo's four children – now aged 21, 19, 15 and 13 – Palmieri said, "Our hope is that this settlement brings some closure to the family."

But it's not money that will bring closure, Pearce said, and this litigation was about so much more than any financial security for the Longos' children.

"Had the city acknowledged that there were flaws in their system, and if they had stepped up and implemented an adequate policy in the fall of 2009, this case never would have proceeded," Pearce said. "We would have been satisfied with that change at that time, but that didn't happen."

As the settlement was announced in front of U. S. District Judge David N. Hurd on Friday, the city's attorney Bartle Gorman made clear that the city is not accepting any blame for the murder-suicide.

"This settlement is acknowledged by the parties not to be an admission of liability, but the voluntary compromise of disputed claims," Gorman said.

But Palumbo-Longo's family and their attorneys – John Dillon, Robert Julian, and Josiah Pertz – left the city and community with a final mission.

"The city should voluntarily commit to adopting an officer-involved domestic violence policy that addresses staff training, reporting requirements and procedures for investigating such incidents," they wrote. "Addressing the broader issue of domestic violence requires cooperation, collaboration and a desire to let Kristin's heartbreaking story, and the stories of other victims, be the catalyst for positive change."